Above: Hundreds of people wait in line Thursday for gas-powered generators at a Home Depot in Mountain Home, Ark. Left: Caleb Chalker of Beaumont, Texas, works on a power line in Mountain Home. In Kentucky, more than 600,000 homes and businesses were in the dark as a result of Tuesday's ice storm. Convoys of utility workers were arriving to help with the worst outages. Deputies in some communities went door to door to let people know where shelters were. Phone lines were down and Internet service was spotty.

Caleb Chalker of T&D Power of Beaumont, Texas,works on a power line Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009 in Mountain Home, Ark. A winter storm dumped nearly three inches of ice and snow on northern Arkansas Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009 causing widespread power outages.

CADIZ, Ky. — Storm-battered residents of several states hunkered down in frigid homes and shelters Thursday, expecting to spend at least a week without power and waiting in long lines to buy generators, firewood, groceries and bottled water.

Utility companies in Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Arkansas and West Virginia warned that the estimated 1.3 million people left in the dark by an ice storm wouldn’t have power back before Saturday at the earliest, and at worst, as late as mid-February.

Already, the situation was becoming dire for some communities in Kentucky, where the power outages crippled pumping stations and cut off access to water.

Tracie and Jeff Augustinovich drove 15 miles from their home in the western Kentucky town of Rock Castle to buy groceries. Their home had very little running water, and though they stocked up before the storm, they weren’t sure their supplies would last.

“We’re buying up anything that we can eat cold,” Tracie Augustinovich said.

For heat, the couple were using a kerosene heater loaned to them by a friend — at least until the fuel runs out. When it does, she said, they would go to a shelter.

At a Pep Boys in Louisville, Jason Breckinridge scored one of the last 5,500-watt generators for his elderly parents after putting his name on a waiting list.

“Man, this thing is huge,” he said as he wedged it in the back seat, “but we’ll find a way to get it out and get it hooked up.”

Utility crews found themselves up against roads blocked by ice-caked power lines, downed trees and other debris. Help from around the country was arriving in convoys to assist the states with the worst outages.

But with so many homes and businesses in the dark — there were more than 600,000 across Kentucky alone — the effort is still expected to take days, if not weeks.

Hundreds of shelters opened their doors, and deputies in some communities went door to door to let people know where they were. Since phone service and Internet connections are spotty in many places, there wasn’t another way.

Since the storm began Monday, the weather has been blamed for at least 25 deaths — six in Texas, four in Arkansas, three in Virginia, six in Missouri, two in Oklahoma, two in Indiana, and one each in West Virginia and Ohio. Emergency officials feared that toll could rise if people stay in their homes without power for too long, because improper use of generators can cause carbon monoxide poisoning.